Journalism and American Democracy

Alright, alright…I guess I’ll take the free iPad you’re throwing at me.  Admittedly, I was not the first person to jump on the iPad bandwagon.  It seems like a lighter computer with a more annoying keyboard.  I sound like an old grouchy man, but it’s true – these are my feelings.

After messing around with all of the cool apps that the iPad has to offer, I consider myself mistaken – they’re awesome.  And addicting.  I’ve found that after discovering and personalizing Flipboard, I get annoyed with your plain ol’ newspaper over breakfast.  Why?  Because all the sudden newspapers are a hassle.  They unfold into huge spreads, they are not really visually appealing, and I find myself zoning out  while skimming over headlines of news I don’t really want to read, now that I know what personalized news is like.

That is not to say that I’m going to start purging my shelves of physical books, only to amass a gigantic library of e-books on the iPad.  Nor does it mean that I will reach for my iPad when I need to write a 5 page paper.  There are some limitations to this amazing little machine, and I don’t want to get too carried away here.

In the end, receiving iPads in this class offers a unique experience for us students: we can get a real feel for all that iPads have to offer.  This extends beyond the classroom and beyond class content, and that, my technologically equipped friends, is something very exciting indeed.

Our class’s work on the iPad this semester has been both enjoyable and beneficial to our examination of journalism and democracy in America. With the continuing expansion of technology, news can be delivered and consumed on a huge variety of platforms, and the iPad gives users a mobile, user-friendly device with access to countless media and applications. The iPad introduced me to many useful apps that expanded my ability and options for news consumption, with Flipboard probably being one of the most useful in its function as a news conglomeration program. Flipboard allowed me to access a wide range of news stories from a variety of topics and sources, and fit perfectly with the touch screen page-turning presentation that the iPad allows. Our discovery of the “news-creation” app Storify also showed us some of the great possibilities for utilizing different media to share stories, and the iPad is a great platform to access the social media, videos, and text sources that can combine to make a unique and powerful presentation. Overall, the iPad’s combination of a user-friendly interface with access to a multitude of forms of media made it a useful and enriching tool for our class and for our overall news consumption.

On the other hand, one personal trend I did notice with the iPad was that I probably did not use it as much as I should or could have for all sorts of tasks, largely because I normally and habitually do so much news consumption on my laptop. I have not gotten into the habit of reading news while “on the go,” and I never developed the habit of frequently taking my iPad out and using it while away from my room. While the iPad is a great and innovative device, ultimately I feel like it does not offer many large-scale capabilities that are not available on a laptop. This observation likely occurs to me largely because of my own technology-use and news consumption habits, and there is no doubt that the iPad’s portability and combination of technology and media capabilities make it a very useful device. I very much enjoyed my introduction to the iPad this semester, and I feel that there is a high probability that I will be using a tablet again extensively in the future, whether professionally, leisurely, or both.

As my time with the iPad is quickly coming to an end, I realize how attached I have grown to a technology that I never thought I needed. Getting the opportunity to use the iPad was such a great experience, because it was like a technology test drive, where I got to try out the iPad and all its capabilities for the semester. Prior to this class, my mom would often call or text me, asking me if I had heard about a particular news story or event. More often than not, my response would be something along the lines of “No, I don’t really watch the news. I live in the Notre Dame bubble.” During the course of this semester, though, I found that I was much more connected to the world outside of Notre Dame, as a result of the class discussions we had, as well as the convenience of the iPad.

Although I do not necessarily see myself continuing with the use of Twitter after this semester, it was interesting to see what it was all about after having been encouraged by my friends to join for ages. I still do not love Twitter, because I feel it is used by many people in a manner that is less than productive, it was interesting to learn about what a major asset it is becoming for journalists. While it was initially challenging for me to find a story to tweet everyday, I eventually found myself checking Twitter and finding stories to tweet without deliberately having to search for one. Admittedly, prior to this semester, the “news source” I most commonly read was probably people.com. Through the use of Twitter, I have been able to read headlines and stories more quickly and easily from a greater variety of sources.  This is the same reason I also love the Flipboard app, because I was able to follow all the news sources I was interested in, as well as my social media networks, in one easy place. In fact, I think I like Flipboard more than Twitter, because I particularly like how visual it is, with the bold headlines and photos being more engaging.

It is going to be a sad day on Thursday when I have to return my iPad (I always have called it “my” iPad in denial of the that I would not be able to keep it…), but I really enjoyed having it for the semester in order to more completely immerse myself in the relationship between journalism and democracy. As a non-journalism student, this class was a great introduction of sorts. The use of the iPad allowed us to really immerse ourselves in the new technologies associated with the journalism profession. So not only were we learning about journalism and its conventions, but also acting as mini journalists as we also employed these technologies. So after a wonderful semester together, on Thursday I will fondly say “goodbiPad.”